It would 'have been better' to have tested 60,000 nursing homes sooner, admits Taoiseach

By Daniel McConnell and Aoife Moore

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has admitted that it would “have been better” to have tested 60,000 nursing home patients and staff sooner for Covid-19, but said the scale of the challenge facing the country has been extraordinary.

Mr Varadkar said that the frontline now in the battle against this virus is nursing homes and long term care institutions.

“Certainly what we’re doing in terms of testing nursing homes is above and beyond what’’s happening in most countries. That is, you know, carrying out tests of staff and residents in all nursing homes affected and staff more generally," he said.

Would it have been a good thing if we had done that sooner. Yeah, I think it would.

“But last week and the week before we’d have a massive backlog of tests, and they were tests done on people who actually had symptoms. So even if we had done sooner we wouldn’t have got the test results, and that’’s just the reality of the situation,” he added.

“We’ve made sure that our hospitals have not been overwhelmed in the way that people might have anticipated a few weeks ago, and now really the front line of the battle is on long term care facilities and nursing homes where there have been a lot of outbreaks,” he said.

He declined to criticise the Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan’’s decision not to restrict movement into nursing homes at the start of the crisis, given the high number of fatalities in the 575 facilities across the country.

“You know I’d never be one to second guess the clinical advice the advice of our CMO, and the national public health emergency team. They made that judgement based on the information that they had at the time, whether it would have made a difference or not, nobody can say, you know, that’s, that’s only speculation.

"We know the incubation period of this virus is five to 11 and a half days so you can work that out for yourself, it’s impossible to judge that,” he said.

The Taoiseach added that Ireland could be facing several waves of the Covid-19 virus but we just don’’t know yet if that might be the case.

Mr Varadkar said that until an accurate antibody test arrives, there is no certainty as to how the virus will spread.

The number of people claiming the emergency unemployment payment has risen by more than 50,000 in six days, amid ongoing fears for Ireland’’s hospitality industry.

Under the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment scheme, those who find themselves out of work receive a weekly payment of €350, which hit 584,000 claimants on Monday.

The number of people applying for the payment has grown steadily, seeing an increase of 52,000 thousand from last Tuesday, when 532,000 people had applied.

The Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme, introduced by the government to pay a percentage of employee wages in order to support businesses in retaining their staff, and ensure job stability post-pandemic now has 46,000 employers registered.

Revenue paid out €21.3m on Monday, with the cumulative value now paid out at €321m.